From Water to Fine Wine
by Seishuku Skuld
Summary: Suggested Seishirou x Subaru shounen-ai, darkfic, angst, spoilers for X16. An alternative look at Seishirou and his last words with Subaru.


**From Water to Fine Wine**

by Seishuku Skuld (skuldhotohori@yahoo.com) 

Series: X 

Pairing: maybe Seishirou x Subaru 

Warnings: mild shounen-ai, angst, darkfic, spoilers for X16 

Author's Notes: I got sick of writing crazy!Subaru fic, so I decided to write a crazy!Seishirou fic.Now, I'm not normally of the school of thought that Seishirou is insane, I just sort of entertained that idea because a fic bunny jumped me in a middle of a very long conversation with Mai. ^^;;Don't worry, crazy Subaru fans, I'm sure I'll get back to writing more angsty Subaru fics.In the meantime, enjoy a small departure from the norm. ^_^ 

Disclaimers: Seishirou really belongs to CLAMP, but for the moment, he and his neuroses belong to me!Bwa ha ha!Mine!To do with what I will!Ha ha ha ha!Too bad this is temporary.-_-;; 

+++++++++++ 

The first time he became entranced with knives was when he was in veterinary school.The subject of animals had never terribly interested him, unlike so many of his classmates.There was cheerful Miwako who always played with the hurt puppies, and kind Hayashi who was always gentle with the kittens.It always made Seishirou feel oddly out of place, for he did not enjoy working with what he deemed to be vermin, neither did he feel a particular warmth for the cheerful chirp of a healing bird. 

His purpose of being a veterinarian was entirely to cover a shunt for spell-backlash.The Sakurazukamori killing incantation was particularly powerful, and gave him hell when it reflected back on its caster.It was not until he had found a young, wounded dog in the streets one day had he realized that he could use the tiny thing as a channel for magical energies. 

The result would inevitably kill the animal, for such a small body could not withstand the waves of magical power directed at it.So strictly speaking, Seishirou was not at the top of his class, because there would always be the odd bird or newt dying under his care, but the school accepted death as a normal thing, and Seishirou graduated at the young age of twenty-three with his veterinary license. 

It was one day in the first year he had set up his business in Shinjuku, that the scalpel had especially begun intrigue him.It was nothing more than a German Shepard with a stomach tumor, but even such a commonplace problem required surgery, and so Seishirou put the dog to sleep and prepared his knives. 

It had been a curious thing, as the young vet placed the scalpel on the dog's belly, how the skin peeled away smoothly under the sharp blade.There was even a small sound as he cut through layers and layers of dead and living cells, for all the world sounding like the peeling of an onion.He had looked at the knife in astonishment then, not having experienced such a feeling before - the preciseness of the cut, the enchantment of the skin parting before the sharp edge like legendary Moses parting the Red Sea.It was beautiful, the blade steeped in blood, rivulets of pure scarlet embedded among plains of chill grey metal. 

"Sakurazuka-sensei?" Nurse Megumi had shaken him out of his reverie, tossing him back into the insides of the anesthetized canine, red and warm, filled with life."The tumor." 

"Yes," Seishirou had said, and continued smoothly with the operation, not giving his discovery another thought until his workday had been over and all his assistants gone home for the night. 

He had sat alone in his operating room, all his instruments laid out carefully for him to see, gleaming with a sinister light in the brightly lit room.They beckoned to him, those seductive edges, inviting more rivers of fresh, crimson blood to run free on their smooth metallic surfaces. 

"Yes," Seishirou hissed, his eyes riveted on their burnished, twinkling eyes, hypnotized by the promises of mixed pain and pleasure.That was the first night he had ever been injured.He couldn't even remember any scrapes or bruises when he was a child.Despite watching his mother kill numerous victims, he could not remember ever seeing his own blood.He had half expected it to be twisted and tainted, perhaps a sickly green or a muddy black, but it was red, gloriously red, crisp and clean just like everyone else's. 

But he was not like everyone else. 

It was some sort of perverse delight to him, as he selected a tasty bit of flesh on his arm and made the tiniest incision.A large droplet of blood formed at the mouth of the miniscule cut, sitting there like some rare red wine, lovely and thick, begging to be tasted.Seishirou lifted his arm hesitantly to his lips, savoring the pearly bead of claret liquid before pressing his mouth to it and sucking it away.It was salty; he had never tasted blood before.A little bit like semen, he noted, but not quite the same.This was far more enchanting in color and composition, far harder to find, far more valuable.This was precious. 

Once more that night, Seishirou brought the scalpel to his own skin, this time slicing deeper, a long gash that extended half the length of his forearm.Blood had poured out of the wound, as if the cut had been crying carmine tears.He hissed with pain as his skin parted, enjoying and hating every inch the blade rent his skin.He lapped up all the blood cascading down his arms until his lips had been stained dark rouge.Then he cleaned his wound with antiseptic, sterilized his knife, and healed himself a bit with his magic.That had not been strictly needed, but he wanted to maintain some outer sense of normalcy, and despite his incredible healing prowess, a fresh scar on his arm would simply not do for appearances. 

Then he put everything neatly away into its proper place and made sure to feed all the recuperating animals before stepping out into the streets of Tokyo.The sun had already set, but activity never ceased in the urban center of Shinjuku.Seishirou locked his clinic and melted into the crowd, eyes scanning the myriad of faceless wanderers for another unwitting victim to feed the Tree's power. 

Three days later, the German Shepard who had so wonderfully bequeathed him with his first real experience, died.The tumor had been removed but the dog had regretfully, not survived due to unknown causes.Seishirou smirked as he tossed the body to into the box that would be picked up later by the mournful family.It was a fitting end for the animal that had shown him a new meaning to his empty life. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

_"Sei-chan!"_

Seishirou looked up, startled out of memories he had thought were long forgotten.Rosy sakura petals swirled around his figure in the darkness of Ueno Park, like the gentle of fall of leaves in autumn.He turned to cast a curious glance at the giant Tree.The speaker of that voice, Hokuto...she had been dead for eight years already.Where had that voice come from? 

Seishirou's one eyes darted about his surroundings, opening his mind to his vicinity, searching for any presence, physical or otherwise.There was nothing, but the resonance of the Sakura.Seishirou frowned, one hand reflexively touching his left wrist.He thumbed his own delicate skin, thinking how many times he had cut there, how many times he had watched the flesh mend under his own magic, how many towels he had thrown out, soaked in crimson.He smirked.Too many to count. 

It was when he was fifteen years old that he first realized that he was invincible.He could feel nothing.He was like the toughest metal - he could not be broken, nor bent, nor breached.His magic was far more powerful than his mother's, and he knew that there would never be anything in either the physical or the spiritual worlds that would defeat him.Sakurazuka Seishirou was, for all practical purposes, immortal. 

Immortality and invincibility had its drawbacks.Nothing hurt because he could not feel anything.He did what his mother told him.She had said to him that he would have to take on the legacy of the Sakura Barrow Guardian and kill her when the time came.She had never told him when that time would be.He had come home from school one day, and found her ready to die.So, he had killed her.Without even a shred of remorse or pity as his mother's blood stained the snow beneath her like the fall of a great, sanguine teardrop.He did not love her.He did not love anything, nor did he hate.He simply was.He was Sakurazuka Seishirou, Sakurazukamori, murderer, assassin, a strong bulwark against the morality of humanity.He could not feel.He had not known pain in his lifetime, neither had he known happiness.He did not know anger; he did not know sadness or hardship. 

That was what he realized when he had been staring down at that poor pathetic girl's spine, the bone grayish in color, still covered with slick, incarnadine membrane: little spider webs of blood vessels fighting for a life they would not be granted.He was not appalled at the murder of a child, a crime that would have been vulgar and repulsive to anyone else. 

But Seishirou knew that he was not like anyone else. 

It was then he had seen the innocent boy in the snow-white robes, untainted, untarnished, crystal clear tears falling from large verdant eyes at the mere thought of the dead and their suffering.There was the picture of virtue, of justice, of beauty, all that was good that Seishirou could not touch.He wanted it for his own.He wanted this perfect image of Providence to show him that there was still something.He had marked the boy as his prey, under the Tree, on that very same day so many years past.He had made the bet, and nearly forgotten it until Subaru had been tossed at him by the fates. 

He had met the boy again at the subway station, by some remarkable coincidence - his own victim, falling into his very lap as easily as he would have handled a playful puppy.Seishirou laughed, and let the sound echo about the blackness of the night.It was late, much too late for anyone to hear, and if anyone should, he or she would quickly be made into another meal for the ancient Tree. 

Sumeragi Subaru and his twin sister, Hokuto, such naive and innocent children they had been.They knew of the Sakurazukamori, and yet willingly befriended a member of the Sakurazuka Clan, like hapless field mice walking into the lion's den.And lion he had proved to be.First, he had broken Subaru's heart, then he had broken his arm and sent him into a deep catatonia, which only the death of his sister had roused him from.That night, Seishirou had stolen away and hidden himself.He had pulled out all of his knives again.It had nearly been a year since he had used them on himself.It had been with some sort of grim desperation that he had brought them out again, the same sort of desperation that drove him to spend a year with the Sumeragi twins. 

Seishirou snorted, once again snapping out of his thoughts.So much for the bet.It had proved to be false. The heavens had given him an answer but it was an empty one, devoid of meaning.Anyone else would have fallen for the young boy, but not he.It was simply impossible so he had given up all pretense. 

A mere year after his first cut on himself, the experience had grown old.He had cut himself in so many places, and they had all healed with or without his magic.There was only transient pain, a short spike of pleasure at the spice of his own blood, and then everything dulled and he was numb once more.He had stopped during the year with the Sumeragi twins, simply because it was no longer rewarding. 

After killing Hokuto, he had cut himself again that night - to see if Subaru's sister's death would make any lasting impact upon him.It did not, and Seishirou was not terribly surprised. He had cleaved through tendon and to hard bone, blood flowing everywhere around him, threatening to drown him as it splashed onto the floor of his clean, white bathroom.He had passed out, and when he awoke in the morning, pale and weak, the cut had sealed, the tendon miraculously mended.He was still alive.Still numb.He had laughed.It was irony, and he found that he should laugh at that. 

But it did not amuse him. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

"Now what would be the most amusing thing to do to my Subaru-kun?" Seishirou said to himself.He held in his hands a very diminutive scalpel, one that he had used on small rodents, mice and hamsters mostly. 

"First, I'd cut him like this."He made a long cut that stretched from his collarbone to his navel.He looked at himself in the mirror, a thin line of red running down his chest.He did not bleed much, for the knife was minute.It was a bit of a pity, that, but he had already grown sick of his larger blades.Besides, delicate boys like Subaru needed delicate instruments.The small scalpel would serve him quite nicely. 

"And then, across the chest, like this."Seishirou winced as he drew the tiny thing across his chest, slicing through both dark, chocolate-colored nipples.The pain passed quickly.He smiled grimly at his reflection in the mirror, a cruciform carved in flesh upon his torso, bleeding small droplets of blood like a child's large, reluctant tears. 

"See, Subaru-kun?Aren't you beautiful like that, covered in thin trickles of blood?Would you let me lick it off you?" 

Seishirou ran a finger down his chest, collecting the largest drop carefully.Every last drop was precious.He lifted it to his lips, where his pink tongue snaked out to snatch the bead of liquid.He closed his eyes, willing time to stop as he savored the taste of his own blood.Such moments were so rare. 

Only after the saltiness had gone - melted away - had Seishirou opened his eyes again.He smiled. 

"Now doesn't that taste lovely?" 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

He was sick of it all.Immortality was definitely on his list of things he hated, if he could have hated something.Subaru would have been on the list of his things he loved, if he could have loved anything.The year had been plain and simple to Seishirou.The world was going to end.He didn't care.Fuuma had taken Subaru's eye.He didn't care.Subaru wanted to kill him.He should have cared, but he didn't. 

It had been the first day of January 1999, and Seishirou had woken up with a start, because he couldn't feel his feet.He knew by logic that they were still there, but he couldn't feel them.He stared at them and they were attached to his body, but for all he knew someone could have taken his real feet and given him wooden replacements.They were numb.He had tried poking at them with sharp objects, hot objects, cold objects, and though his skin would respond and he would bleed, he felt nothing.That had been the beginning of everything sliding downhill, a horrific event like a monstrous avalanche; if anything to Seishirou could have been horrific. 

The non-feeling had slowly crept up his legs, tree-like, with long questing fingers, to his torso, upwards to his shoulders before it split into three branches and spread into his neck, his face, and his two arms.It was quite late in the year, several kekkai had already fallen, half of Tokyo was in ruins, and he could not feel a thing.He was dead, or he might as well have been.The only feeling left was in his hands.He supposed the gods, if there were in fact any, had been kind in sparing him that at least. 

It was all an old game now, one that he had been playing for some thirty-odd years.He had grown weary of it.His knives were useless now for all the blood they shed.He could no longer feel even pain, the only real physical experience he had ever obtained; they were of no more use to him.He had incinerated each and every last one with his magic, in a spectacular shower of light and sparks as befitting the end of the Sakurazukamori. 

Now he was truly immortal. He was a piece of hard crystal or a crust of diamond, impervious to the elements, impervious to time.It was all becoming quite tiresome. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

He tried hard to think of the most painful words he could say to Subaru.Funny, how the boy still had that bandage around that eye of his."Did he feel pain?" Seishirou wondered.This boy was who was still so pure despite all that he had done to break him.Subaru was broken, but he was not dead, nor was he helpless, as the cloud of whirling shikigami he tossed in Seishirou's direction plainly showed. 

But Destiny was foreordained, was it not? 

Seishirou held on tight to the bandage that had unraveled from Subaru's missing eye.He clasped it tight in his hands, feeling clearly the cloth's texture.His last real feeling, before he forsook his immortal life.How interesting.How regretful that he had not a knife to carve that lovely crucifix into Subaru's chest.He would have dearly enjoyed doing that, tasting the boy's blood for once.But even that little allowance was lost to him, because three weeks ago, he had lost all ability to taste. 

Seishirou leapt into the air, tossing a spell at Subaru, while the boy countered with another powerful offensive.He caught Subaru's hand in the air as another volley of shikigami left it.He pressed the small, slender thing made of flesh and bone to his chest as he raised his right hand for the kill. 

"Hello, Subaru-kun." 

There was a flash of blinding white light.And what should have been pain.All Seishirou saw was the dark asphalt and the pool of blood.Never before had he seen so much of his own life pouring from the gaping hole in his chest that he knew must be there.He saw the fountain of vermilion liquid that fell as Subaru pulled his hand from the wound in shock.Seishirou leaned into the Sumeragi's embrace, hardly hearing the younger boy's words as he stared into his own sanguine reflection.Odd, he seemed old and tired.He had never felt old, and never known fatigue.What was this strange new thing? 

He lifted his head slowly to gaze at the Sumeragi's face, crowned by sparkling tears, gleaming in the pale light of the kekkai.Subaru was crying.Why? 

"Because," Seishirou lifted a hand covered in blood, "you've always been so kind." 

Subaru looked a bit shocked.Seishirou caressed his cheek and found to his dismay that he had lost all feeling in his hands.It was all gone.It was over. 

"Subaru-kun," Seishirou lifted himself, leaning his head back to whisper into the Sumeragi's ear with the last vestiges of his drained strength. 

_"Boku wa...kimi ga..."_

**I...you...**

He said goodbye to the world that had shown him nothing - nothing at all but a few fleeting moments of pain and pleasure.No happiness, no suffering, no justice, no love.The world was a cold, cruel place, as was his Subaru-kun, who had been so lucky to have been gifted with everything Seishirou had ever wanted to experience.A dark surge of bitterness awoke in his dying body, soaring to the forefront of his thoughts, like a rush of liquor aged for too long.Belatedly, Seishirou realized that this was all he had ever known. 

_"...dai kirai..."_

**I hate you.**

And then he tumbled into oblivion; swallowed by a world of darkness and fine red wine which was Fate's last parting gift to Sakurazuka Seishirou. 

~*end*~ 


End file.
